JOIN Problems on MySQL Upgrade 4.1 to 5

These days we are porting our JAVA-based CMS from MySQL 4.1 to 5.
There was one big error we had in our statements
Unknown column 'teaser.ID' in 'on clause'.
The affected statment was (simplified):
SELECT teaser.URL, meta.URL
FROM REP_META teaser, REP_META meta
**LEFT JOIN REP_PARAM param ON teaser.ID=param.META_ID**
WHERE teaser.ID=meta.ID;
The problem is: We placed the join clause behind the Table list.
Thats bad and forbidden in MySQL 5:
The JOIN clause has to appear immediate behind …

The problem is: We placed the join clause behind the Table list.
Thats bad and forbidden in MySQL 5:
The JOIN clause has to appear immediate behind the table to be joined (Note: the table definitions meta and teaser had been switched):